Self-supervised Learning in Remote Sensing: A Review
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Abstract (arXiv)
In deep learning research, self-supervised learning (SSL) has received great attention triggering interest within both the computer vision and remote sensing communities. While there has been a big success in computer vision, most of the potential of SSL in the domain of earth observation remains locked. In this paper, we provide an introduction to, and a review of the concepts and latest developments in SSL for computer vision in the context of remote sensing. Further, we provide a preliminary benchmark of modern SSL algorithms on popular remote sensing datasets, verifying the potential of SSL in remote sensing and providing an extended study on data augmentations. Finally, we identify a list of promising directions of future research in SSL for earth observation (SSL4EO) to pave the way for fruitful interaction of both domains.
Key facts. Cited by 137 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 126 of its 253 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 27 Jun 2022.
Builds on
126 of 253 references.
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Citing papers per year: 2022: 5; 2023: 37; 2024: 34; 2025: 34; 2026: 27.
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- 2023Self-Supervised Multimodal Learning: A Surveycited by 58
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- 2023Feature Guided Masked Autoencoder for Self-supervised Learning in Remote Sensingcited by 48
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- 2026Label-Efficient Learning for Ground-Based Sky-Image Classification: A Benchmark of Transfer Learning, Active Learning, and Pseudo-Labeling on GCD22 Sep 2026
- 2026Far from the Crowd: Scalable Self-Supervised Learning via Geographic Isolation20 Aug 2026
- 2026Fermat Active Laplace Learning for Semi-Supervised Hyperspectral Image Classification3 Aug 2026
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- 2026Scalable and Trustworthy Earth Observation Foundation Models8 Jul 2026
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- 2026Who Needs Labels? Adapting Vision Foundation Models With the Metadata You Already Have3 Jun 2026
- 2026SpectralEarth-FM: Bringing Hyperspectral Imagery into Multimodal Earth Observation Pretraining20 May 2026
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- 2026ZAYAN: Disentangled Contrastive Transformer for Tabular Remote Sensing Data30 Apr 2026
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